


After Hours

by crinkledpages



Series: Let's pretend we love the dark [1]
Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, M/M, Monsters in the Attic, This is really less spooky more fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:41:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26228848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crinkledpages/pseuds/crinkledpages
Summary: Wonwoo is that kid who lives in a house on a hill - the perfect story setting for tales of ghosts lurking in his basement, of chilling screams wailing at midnight. Except...what if they're actually true?
Relationships: Jeon Wonwoo/Wen Jun Hui | Jun
Series: Let's pretend we love the dark [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1905010
Comments: 9
Kudos: 29





	After Hours

**Author's Note:**

> For SVT Fear Exchange's Septemfear drabble challenge:)
> 
> Day 1: Attic

The dust motes have formed a new ceiling. There are spiders crawling about, their webs laying their thick, sticky traps across rotting floorboards. 

Wonwoo knows this without even having to push open the old, creaky wooden door. It was almost predictable for a house that had spent the better part of thirty years in a dilapidated state - crumbling porch, blown lamps, peeling paintwork. And don’t even get started on the thicket of wild geraniums and butterfly weeds shooting up in tall, imposing patches all around the house. 

“It’s dusty. And dirty.” He says to himself in the mirror. “So dusty.”

He wishes he were allergic to dust. So that he’d have an excuse not to go in. He pushes his sleeve up his wrist to glance at his watch, even though he’s done this at least six times in the past forty-five minutes. Five to one. His heart quickens and he can hear the beat thumping like its own ticking clock in his ears. 

It’s just Wonwoo and Wonwoo alone for the next two weeks, and he has never felt as hyperaware of this empty three-storey house and the grand lustrous garden surrounding it until this hour. In books, it’s always those wee hours when people made all sorts of wrong decisions. You’d always read and think how stupid they were, but in the here and now, Wonwoo can feel a kind of kinship. He’s just like them - he’s become a character in his own book - the weird boy who lived in the house on a hill with a sinister secret. 

That’s exactly who he is: the strange Jeon boy come back to town, whose family lived in that old, creepy house on the hill, the stuff spooky small town stories are made of. 

The century-old grandfather clock downstairs chimes one - one am, Wonwoo, it’s fucking one am, and you’re an idiot - it’s a single gong but it pushes the sound across the entire house, wailing the time, the blessed witching hour. Goosebumps creep onto his skin as the echo holds and shudders out into nothing along the corridor outside his bedroom. 

Wonwoo considers being stubborn. He plops facedown onto his pillow, scanning Instagram on his phone to see what party Soonyoung was crashing back home in the city, or what fancy bar Seungcheol was drinking at to while away a Friday night.

_Wonwoo._

Wonwoo squeezes his eyes shut. 

_You’d dare ignore me?_

Fuck. Fuckity-fuck. He clenches his teeth hard until he can hear his molars grind against each other in his head. He can feel his face flush from the knowledge of being watched. The pillow is suffocating against his nose, but he refuses to budge for fear of seeing a shadow move across his wall. 

_It’s no good, Wonwoo. It’s just you and me here for the next two weeks. The house has been quiet, but if I make it scream, you won’t have anyone come to check on you ever. Not even your friend Jihoon who lives down below the hill._

_Fuck!_ , he yells into his pillow. 

_Creak-creak-creak._

Wonwoo tiptoes on the stairs all the way up to the attic, phone torchlight sparking blaring white spots across his vision. His hands are shaking, and his neck itches with the sweat on his collar chafing against his nape. 

The door looms in the distance. It takes all his willpower not to turn tail and run back down the way he came. But he summons Jeon Wonwoo of three days ago, who’d climbed up with nothing but genuine curiosity, who’d been fearless because he’d been so ignorant. 

He pushes open the door, jumping when the doorknob rattles loudly in the quiet. His phone slips against his damp fingertips. “Fuck,” he curses reflexively. 

“Wonwoo,” a voice calls softly, and that’s enough for his skin to tingle with warmth and an odd thrill. 

A shadow slips out of the cover of darkness the floor-to-ceiling cabinets lend, stepping into the thin beams of moonlight shining in through the tiny window. He’s tall, and alluring, and everything Wonwoo isn’t and has maybe wished he was a couple of times. The way he stands like a predator should make his skin crawl, but it doesn’t. 

“Wonwoo,” he says again, beckoning him with a single crook of his finger. 

Wonwoo hesitates for a beat, wanting to drink Junhui in in full. The false rise and dip in his chest, the charming flutter of those long eyelashes, the luscious pink lips. He wants to remind himself that danger exists, and is standing right in front of him.

“I won’t ask you again,” Junhui hums, but the black in his eyes betrays his annoyance. Wonwoo gravitates to his outstretched arms, letting this phantom being wind his pale arms around his body, wrapping him in his chilly embrace. 

“Junhui,” he sighs, voice equally whispery-soft. He folds his arms around his lithe body, feeling how real and solid he is, everything like a character in a fantasy, but nothing fictional about him at all.

In the moonlight, his skin looks paper-thin. Wonwoo traces a light finger across his cheek to examine him, his own monster in the attic. Junhui catches his hand, kisses his wrist. He licks the vein along the inner wrist expectantly.

“Again?” Dread sinks into the pit of his stomach. 

Junhui simply nods, swooping in to kiss his mouth. “You promised me every night, Wonwoo. I expect people to keep their promises.”

Wonwoo gulps but he opens his mouth needily, desire and guilt pooling and replacing his dread. “Okay. Okay.”

Junhui pushes him up against the window, framing him in a halo of yellowish-white. Taking his wrist yet again, he plants a series of gentle kisses that contrarily sends him into more of a panic. Junhui senses this, because his eyes flick to his quickly and he doesn’t drag it out any longer. In the next second, a burst of white-hot pain erupts from his wrist and he feels a trickle of warmth coat his hand. Wonwoo suddenly feels very faint. 

“Beautiful,” Junhui murmurs from where his mouth is positioned around his hand, tongue sweeping across the wound, closing it up. “Beautiful,” he says again as he watches how Wonwoo takes short, shallow breaths to calm his woefully mortal heart, black hair plastered to his forehead.

Wonwoo feels his knees give way like how they have for the past three nights, and Junhui catches him, cradles him to his chest. His eyes flutter closed when he presses his cheek against his soft cotton sweater. When Junhui bends to kiss his hair, his heart beats traitorously faster, and he almost lurches up to beg for a proper kiss. 

“I won’t take any more tonight. But tomorrow. Tomorrow, I will have more.”

Wonwoo opens his eyes, looks up at the cloud of dust stretched like a second skin over the ceiling, and a thought occurs to him, how they’re both prisoners here - Junhui of the attic, and Wonwoo, of Junhui.

**Author's Note:**

> [twt](https://twitter.com/moonkyoung_)


End file.
